Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic had major impacts on the seafood supply chain, also reducing fishing activity. It is worth asking if the fish stocks in the Mediterranean Sea, which in most cases have been in overfishing conditions for many years, may have benefitted from the reduction in the fishing pressure. The present work is the first attempt to make a quantitative evaluation of the fishing effort reduction due to the COVID-19 pandemic and, consequently, its impact on Mediterranean fish stocks, focusing on Adriatic Sea subareas. Eight commercially exploited target stocks (common sole, common cuttlefish, spottail mantis shrimp, European hake, red mullet, anchovy, sardine, and deepwater pink shrimp) were evaluated with a surplus production model, separately fitting the data for each stock until 2019 and until 2020. Results for the 2019 and 2020 models in terms of biomass and fishing mortality were statistically compared with a bootstrap resampling technique to assess their statistical difference. Most of the stocks showed a small but significant improvement in terms of both biomass at sea and reduction in fishing mortality, except cuttlefish and pink shrimp, which showed a reduction in biomass at sea and an increase in fishing mortality (only for common cuttlefish). After reviewing the potential co-occurrence of environmental and management-related factors, we concluded that only in the case of the common sole can an effective biomass improvement related to the pandemic restrictions be detected, because it is the target of the only fishing fleet whose activity remained far lower than expectations for the entire 2020.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.